A sincere congratulations is extended to winners of local primaries, especially those who will be seated facing no opposition in the General Election. A political party’s job is to obviously fight for issues and candidates. But when a winner is decided diplomacy should prevail as both sides simply want good government. We should separate politics from governance after elections.

Our staff of analysts and political statisticians haves been working hard to understand the post primary data. Here’s what we’ve learned.

First, the undervotes in the Democratic presidential primary were unusually high. “No Preference” came in third behind Biden and Sanders in Robeson. If a voter skips making a choice in a race on the ballot, we call that an undervote. Undervotes are common further down the ticket when the voter isn’t familiar with the candidates in that race. But not in high profile races.

“No preference” coming in third at double -digits means a lot of Democrats aren’t happy with their choices. In comparison, while 14% of Democrats had no presidential preference, almost 1.8% of Republicans had no presidential preference, which came in second on the GOP ticket.

Our formulas indicate 60% of Democrat voters were mainstream Democrats, 20% were strong liberal-leaning Democrats and 20% probably should be Republican.

Secondly, name recognition and ground game matters more than ever. Vonta Leach, Tiffany Powers and Wixie Stephens pulled off splendid campaigns. They are high-profile folks everyone knows. And before you think those campaigns simply mobilized African-American votes to pull off their wins, think again.

Greg Bullard won five precincts that Tiffany Powers won but Diane Spurgeon lost. Those five precincts made the difference for both Bullard and Powers. Winning campaigns had broad outreach and demonstrated a diverse electorate. Robeson is larger than we imagine, making that hard to pull off. Name recognition matters more than simply demographics.

Third, the District 7 school board race was way too close. A two-person race would have been interesting.

Fourth,, Republican Mark Robinson is a super star winning 30% in Robeson within a crowded field for lieutenant governor. We can project primary performance to the General Election with a fair bit of accuracy. Watch Robinson as being one of the most popular lieutenant governor candidates ever. Our team had zero surprise and called that one before he even announced his candidacy.

Lastly, we don’t think it’s a coincidence that the only precinct Bernie Sanders won in Robeson coincides with the precinct in which The University of North Carolina at Pembroke is located. We’ll just leave that right there.

But while the president would rather run against Sanders, we don’t blame our Democrat counterparts for trying everything in their power to clear the field for Biden. For Democrats it isn’t as much who is the best candidate as who can best beat President Trump. That’s their job. Republican operators have been in the same position and it’s not comfortable as you’ll take criticism from your own party for doing what you know you have to do.

Forget about the socialist rhetoric for a moment. Operators really just look at the numbers and I’ll tell you what our Democrat counterparts are seeing. Sanders lost more counties to Biden in the primary than he did to Clinton in 2016 despite turnout being a bit higher. That’s 150,000 fewer votes for Sanders.

Primary voters are only a small piece of the electorate. So, ideological extremism is less a factor as the practicality in the numbers. Don’t doubt for a minute if Sanders had the numerical strength that would transfer over to the general electorate that operators wouldn’t be pushing Sanders. While that is a bit concerning, there’s one more thing.

We understand socialism has fewer negative connotations in the post-cold war era. But what is really alarming is that it is so well received by the Democrat primary electorate in a thriving capitalist economy. Would it surge if economic times turned south?

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Phillip Stephens is chairman of the Robeson County Republican Party. He can be reached at [email protected].